


when the fires came

by kusege



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Death, Gen, Grief, Includes my headcanon as to why Winona doesn’t like fire, Manipulation, Natural Disasters, meltdowns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22249933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kusege/pseuds/kusege
Summary: “She’s just flipping through the worlds, genuinely wondering if this is some kind of precedent for the rest of her eternity, when she pauses for a few seconds on one world. Specifically, the world where Maxwell is in the middle of looking distinctly uncomfortable. This is going to be good.”Charlie learns something she didn’t particularly want to know about the world outside.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	when the fires came

Charlie has emerged to observe her Constant due to pure boredom. It’s nice when They give her the option to just not exist, to not pay attention to anything that’s happening in her world, but not knowing what the survivors are doing wears on her after a while. Unfortunately, no one is doing anything  _ interesting. _

Dying, not dying, not dying,  _ that run’s still going?  _ At any rate, it got boring about 80 days ago, dying but what else is new, not dying, just sitting there staring at graves, does she really not have anything better to do, not dying… 

She’s just flipping through the worlds, genuinely wondering if this is some kind of precedent for the rest of her eternity, when she pauses for a few seconds on one world. Specifically, the world where Maxwell is in the middle of looking distinctly uncomfortable. This is going to be good. 

Charlie’s attention falls on the small group just in time to catch Wilson saying “-being from England, I suppose it makes sense that you wouldn’t have heard, but still! It was one of the most deadly natural disasters in America’s history- third most, I believe. I just-“

“Higgsbury, shut up.”

Wilson cuts himself off, frustration clear on his face, but it fades when he sees the look Maxwell is giving Winona. She’s meeting his eyes, pure exhaustion written across her features. He looks… uncertain, nervous.

“... you’re… certain about the date?”

She sounds oddly resigned when she speaks. “Yeah. April 18th, 1906. Huge earthquake.” Charlie’s never heard her sound like this before. Her sister always has a certain pep about her. She’s upbeat, positive even in the worst of times. Even when she isn’t, when her sadness or anger surfaces, she has a presence in it. This is… nothing. Winona’s become a pale reflection of herself, a shell. Charlie doesn’t like it.

And then she registers the date.

“How many…?” Maxwell is twisting his hands in his lap. 

“‘Bout three thousand.”

_ Dead? _

“How….” 

Winona almost smiles for a second, before it leaves her, along with every speck of energy left in her posture. “Either fire or rubble. Mostly fires, through. They burned for days.”

“It… your parents lived in town, didn’t they.”

_ What do our parents have to do with anything?  _ Charlie can feel her agitation rising, the shadows that make up her form are starting to thrash and froth. She doesn’t understand this stupid conversation, and if they’d just be less cryptic about everything….

Winona’s head lowers. 

“I- I’m sorry, I’m not following any of this.”

Maxwell huffs. “You are remarkably unperceptive.”

“Hey!” Wilson starts upright, turning towards Maxwell, clear anger in his eyes. “I’m just trying to understand!”

Maxwell sighs, leans back, thumbs twiddling. He looks up into the sky. There’s a long pause. Charlie thinks she might hear Winona crying, but she’s too quiet to say.

“...My final day on earth was April 17th, 1906. My last showing.” He swallows. “In San Francisco.”

Wilson pales, and Charlie would too, if she had any blood that still ran in her veins. No.

Maxwell looks to Winona. “Tell me, did… the show, did anyone…”

She shakes her head, and takes a deep breath. “It- the, uh, building completely collapsed. Everyone inside,” her voice cracks, “died.” She takes another deep breath, wipes at her cheeks. “Got written off as a precursor to the actual earthquake.”

Charlie can’t tell if Maxwell’s sigh is one of relief or one of pain. 

“They never found your bodies, you know,” Winona continues. Her voice is just on the verge of cracking again, but she keeps talking through it. “It was part of why I was so certain you hadn’t really died. You know, if-“ her voice breaks, and a tear slides down her cheek, and she keeps talking, “-if they found my  _ parents’  _ bodies in a pile of rubble and ash, I was sure that- that  _ yours _ had to-“

Charlie watches, shivering, as Winona bursts into sobs. She knows, vaguely, that Wilson is putting an arm around her, and that Maxwell is reaching out, and that Winona is collapsing into his half-offered hug, weeping into his shoulder, but she can’t think about it more than that.

Her parents are dead. Long-dead, based on what Winona said, have been dead since she came here. Dead in an earthquake. An earthquake, if she’s reading this correctly, that she and Maxwell caused. 

She killed her parents.

She  _ killed _ her  _ parents,  _ and it’s not like here, the real world doesn’t obey the same rules as the Constant, and her parents are gone, gone forever, and she never even got to say goodbye, she never even  _ knew, _ and they’ll never know what happened to her. Had they known the building she and Maxwell were in had collapsed before they died? Had they been worrying for her, or had they never known? She hopes, despite herself, that they hadn’t known, that their last few hours had been happy ones, peaceful, unmarred by her own bad decisions, her mistakes- it was bad enough that she’d  _ killed them- _

Winona is sobbing, but at least she has people to comfort her. Charlie only has the capricious shadows, hugging herself with limbs made of darkness as They whisper to her that there is work to be done. Her tears are fire-hot, or maybe her skin is icy-cold, but at any rate, she thinks she is melting.

**Being human hurts. We can take it away.**

She flees the pain for the oblivion of not existing without further prodding. 

The three survivors sitting around the campfire are too busy comforting each other to hear the hounds begin to bay.


End file.
